Garment Industry

ARTICLES ABOUT GARMENT INDUSTRY BY DATE - PAGE 3

There has been much talk recently revolving around the fact that many of the products that we use are being produced by child labor in so-called sweatshops in many foreign countries. It is a fact that many American companies opened places of this kind, and it is sad that so many jobs were taken away from us in this country. Our government should never have allowed this to happen and should have passed laws prohibiting this practice. All of this talk of child labor and sweatshops once again proves that either we as a country deny our past history or, at the very least, forget it. The present status of many of those foreign countries is the same as ours was 100 years ago. We had children working in our garment industry and also made them work in more dangerous occupations such as coal mining.

Ida Goldman, 99, was an early Chicago union organizer in the garment industry and a founder of an organization dedicated to improving the welfare of women and children in Israel. A resident of Edgewater, she died Saturday at Rush North Shore Medical Center in Skokie. Mrs. Goldman was born in the village of Yaneve, located in what is Belarus, and immigrated to the U.S. alone at age 14. Living with relatives, she sewed coats in Chicago sweatshops until she could bring over her mother, two brothers and a sister.

More than 20 million Americans earn all or part of their living at home, and that number is expected to grow as computers and other technical innovations give more people the option to work at home. Recognizing this trend, the Reagan administration decided last week to end a 45-year-old ban on certain types of at-home work in the garment industry. Early next year, American workers will be allowed to sew gloves, stitch embroidery on sweatshirts, make handkerchiefs and do other work in their homes for commercial firms.

A new Apparel Industry Task Force appointed by Mayor Harold Washington will begin next week to find ways to expand Chicago's garment industry. The task force is only the second initiated by the Department of Economic Development under Washington to study a specific Chicago industry; steel was the first. It will compile the first list in years of the number and kind of apparel producers here, "to develop strategies to increase business development and create job opportunities for Chicagoans in this industry."